> A medallion signature guarantee is a guarantee by the transferring financial institution that the signature is genuine and the financial institution accepts liability for any forgery.
I'm not sure I understand that. Because the signature guarantee isn't "by" the transferring financial institution, is it? You want to transfer an account from "A" to "B" and you get the guarantee from someone that provides guarantees, call them "C". And if someone forges the guarantee, then "C" never did guarantee anything, so why would they be liable, let alone "A" and "B"?
Maybe I'm forgetting how this works...
...reading the wikipedia page, it sounds like the idea is to deal with forgeries of signatures provided to the guarantor. Not with forgeries of the guarantor's approval.
Then again, maybe you can't really forge a guarantee as long as it can be looked up or invalidated by their database.
I think what they are saying is that in the banking system is nearly impossible to steal someone's life savings via a hack and get away with it, or at least if you do they have insurance at the brokerage to cover it.
Maybe I'm forgetting how this works...
...reading the wikipedia page, it sounds like the idea is to deal with forgeries of signatures provided to the guarantor. Not with forgeries of the guarantor's approval.
Then again, maybe you can't really forge a guarantee as long as it can be looked up or invalidated by their database.